Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
PHIL HOPE
MP, RT HON
BARONESS SCOTLAND
OF ASTHAL
QC, MR CHRIS
BARNHAM AND
MRS FRANCES
FLAXINGTON
18 DECEMBER 2006
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Can I welcome,
from the left, Chris Barnham, Phil Hope, the Minister, Lady Scotland—we
are very privileged to have you down from above, as they say—and
Frances Flaxington. It is always a pleasure to have a Minister
from the House of Lords here, particularly Lady Scotland. Thank
you for coming. Phil, it is always a pleasure to see you. I think
everyone knows that this Committee conducted quite a thorough
inquiry into prison education around 15 months ago; we took it
seriously. We went to a lot of prisons in the UK and we went to
Canada, British Columbia and Helsinki, which gave us a great deal
about how different societies look at prisons and what happens
to people in prison. We wrote what we thought was a rather good
report, which the Government quite liked at the time I remember;
the response was quite positive. Shall we get started by saying
to the two Ministers, is there anything you would like to say
before we get into question mode?
Phil Hope: Chairman, we would
like to, if you do not mind. I am going to say a few opening words
on behalf of both Patricia and myself, if that is okay with you.
Q2 Chairman: That is fine.
Phil Hope: We too are pleased
that you have returned to this subject because we think it is
an area of policy and provision which often gets little attention,
so the fact that you are paying it attention, and what I am about
to say, Chairman, is we are paying it a great deal of attention,
is great, so we are very happy to be here today. Whilst I can
agree with your remarks that there were significant aspects of
your report last time on prison education which we agreed with,
there were some areas we felt we were not given any credit for.
I think we had made significant progress at that time, and some
of the major strands of work already in place that we were working
on there do address the great majority of your Committee's concerns
and recommendations. Then we had some well publicised future plans.
Life has moved on, and I want to draw attention to three significant
achievements and a couple of areas we are still concerned about.
Of course, the first is we published the Green Paper, Reducing
Re-offending through Skills and Employment which you will
be familiar with, Chairman. I think this was really clear about
our government policy and across government, which is the important
point here, to reduce re-offending by improving the education
of skills and employment of offenders both in custody and in the
community, so right across the board. Those Green Paper proposals
talked about training to equip offenders with skills that meets
employers' needs; much greater employer engagement in the design
and delivery of that learning which was on offer; a new rights
and responsibilities package for offenders who are accessing any
work-focused provision; and the idea of a new campus model that
would integrate together in an area offender learning into mainstream
delivery by joining up all the existing range of services. Since
the Committee last looked at this we have had OLASS, the Offender
Learning and Skills Service, going live across England. These
are new arrangements, as you know, for planning and delivery of
funding of offender learning. We trialled it in three development
regions—the North East, North West, and South West—and
I think there has been some very good cross-agency work in implementing
the changes which we put in there and, in particular, at a regional
level, getting a good relationship between the Regional Offender
Management Service and the LSC when commissioning regionally,
and at a national level, joint working between NOMS, the LSC and,
indeed, Jobcentre Plus, ensuring that education does meet the
employers' needs and that offenders are then supported in getting
into jobs. Since then, I am sure you have also seen the report
by the Adult Learning Inspectorate which I was delighted to read.
Q3 Chairman: I thought you might
mention that.
Phil Hope: I just want to quote:
"Perhaps the most heartening successes I can report this
year have been achieved in prison learning and skills", and
I am very grateful to David Sherlock and his team for that kind
of endorsement of the work we have been doing. We are not sitting
on our laurels. Even though we have managed to get the proportion
of our prisons that were deemed to be unsatisfactory from 78%
in 2002 down to 16%, which means that 84% are now satisfactory
or better and that is good, we are pressing on even further. We
published our next document just recently, a few days ago, the
Next Steps document which, again, I am sure your Committee
has seen. That very much picked up on the feedback from the Green
Paper. We got 100 written responses at various consultation events.
Indeed, at a conference last week 200-plus people turned up. They
had one of these interactive machines—I do not know if you
have seen these conferences with this type of machine—where
people were asked, "Are you broadly in favour of this policy?"
"Not in favour at all?" or "Opposed to it?",
a remarkable 98% of people there said, "Yes, they endorse
very much the direction of travel" and were "enthusiastic"
or "very enthusiastic" about getting on with that job.
That focuses a whole plan of action for the next few years: the
engagement of employers critically through the Corporate Alliance
and, indeed, through the Sector Skills Councils as well, further
development of that; this campus modelling on the idea of an employability
contract for the offender; and an emphasis on skills and jobs
within prisons and within probation. We want to have two regional
test-beds to develop all of those ideas in one or two regions
to take it forward. Of course, the Leitch Report has come out
since then as well and the context of the wider needs to fill
skills gaps. This is a straightforward economic proposition here,
"There is a group of people here who could fill the skills
gaps of you, the employer, at various levels and therefore they
need to train". There are two areas where I think we have
still got more to do, Chairman, you may have more than these but
I will mention two to start with. One is around targets and target
setting. As you know, performance has been driven by some key
performance indicators around basic skills qualifications and
starting and achieving qualifications in various probation areas.
What we have not had are targets for the learning and skills development
of individual offenders. I think there is an issue there that
we need to deal with. We have got these high level PSA targets,
but what we want to go on to is recording the outcomes for the
individual offender to chart their progress from offending into
not offending as a result of getting skills and getting a job.
I do not think we are there yet and I do not think we have got
the right performance and management regime that really does drive
the prison governor or the chief probation officer linking up
with the OLASS provider or a commissioning body so that we get
a complete pull-through of all those targets throughout the whole
system. Secondly, although, I am pleased to say, we have secured
arrangements to ensure that there is some learner record transfers
around the system in terms of achievements and aspirations of
what learners want to do, we have not got the comprehensive electronic
system which I think is absolutely essential. The reason for that
is there are two or three different systems in place at the moment.
Essentially, this is a technical problem we have to resolve where
you have got the C-NOMIS system, the Management Information System
being developed by the National Offender Management Service, you
have got eASSET, which is another electronic database system,
and we have got our own offender learning database through the
LSC and the LSC's individual learner records. What we are trying
to do here is recognise that the different agencies have, for
very good reasons, developed their own electronic system of capturing
data, but if we want the ambition which we both share, I hope,
Chairman, to join all that up, there is a technical problem to
overcome here. I am confident that we want to do it but we have
got to take the time to get that right because anything which
involves technology, if you do not take the time to get it right
things can go wrong. I am sorry if that was a long opening statement,
I apologise, Chairman, but I wanted to map the picture and this
is where we sit at the moment.
Q4 Chairman: Thank you, Minister,
that was very interesting. In terms of champions, you have mentioned
Leitch and you have announced several champions now post-Leitch,
have you not, what champions have you announced?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: Digby
Jones is going to be the skills envoy for the Leitch agenda.
Q5 Chairman: They are envoys now!
Phil Hope: "Envoy" is
his title.
Q6 Chairman: Seepage from czars!
Phil Hope: His primary focus is
to go out to employers. In terms of the wider Leitch agenda, we
know we have got to get a real balance of individuals wanting
to learn, of government funding the areas where we need to fund,
where there is market failure, Level 2 basic skills and NVQ Level
2, but we need employers to come on board as well. The Leitch
Report recommended that employers sign up to a pledge for training
their staff, and to really make that pledge a reality. It was
an idea which came from what is happening in Wales. We want Sir
Digby Jones to go out there and say to employers, "Listen,
this is an obligation, let us do this". Of course behind
that, as you know, Leitch was recommending that if we have not
achieved sufficient progress by 2010 a legal entitlement will
be introduced for individuals to train up to a full Level 2 qualification
in their place of work. There is a bit of stick and carrot in
both those proposals.
Q7 Chairman: Have any other envoys
been announced yet?
Phil Hope: No. In terms of diplomas,
this is a different issue, these are the new 14-19 diplomas, we
are suggesting that we want champions to take the new 14-19 diplomas
outside so we have asked Mike Tomlinson to talk to the profession,
if I can call it that. Mike's report was seminal, the diplomas
have flowed from his ideas to promote those diplomas.
Q8 Chairman: He is a champion, not
an envoy?
Phil Hope: Yes, Chairman, that
is right, he is a champion of the diploma to the profession. We
have also asked Sir Alan Jones to talk to employers about the
critical importance of diplomas for employers so that they are
really recognised, because employers have helped to design them
to be absolutely the right sort of currency, and the Vice Chancellor
of a university—the name has gone out of my head—to
talk to higher education. It is one of the Russell Group universities,
I think it is Coventry, but I cannot remember offhand.
Q9 Chairman: The Vice Chancellor
of Leeds?
Phil Hope: I will find out for
you and tell you.
Q10 Chairman: I am told it is South
Bank.
Phil Hope: Is it? I am sorry,
I lost track of him. I was not preparing myself for a Leitch discussion
this afternoon, Chairman. Their job is promoting diplomas as a
particular qualification which has huge currency and merit out
there among employers.
Q11 Chairman: These are dual champions
or dual envoys; South Bank and Leeds?
Phil Hope: These are three champions
who have different roles from Digby. Sir Digby Jones is going
up to employers to say, "Train your staff".
Q12 Chairman: Who plays the champion
for prison education and training?
Phil Hope: Sir Digby Jones is
quite interesting in that regard. I do not know if you know Digby's
enthusiasm.
Q13 Chairman: He has not been inside,
has he?
Phil Hope: I would not know about
that, Chairman.
Q14 Chairman: Lesser Members of the
Upper House have been!
Phil Hope: One in four of the
adult population has got some kind of criminal record, so I guess
that puts this Committee in an interesting position. I do know
he is a big champion for training and learning.
Q15 Chairman: There is not going
to be a specific prison education champion?
Phil Hope: No, there is not going
to be because we are putting in place a very big structure with
clarity about what we want to see from different parts of the
system. What we want to do in two regions is put together all
the ideas that are there to make those work and see the outcomes
in those two regions.
Q16 Chairman: Lady Scotland, I must
put my cards on the table in that I did not vote—very unusually
for me since I am regarded as a party loyalist—for the second
reading of the NOMS Bill last Monday. When I was a shadow minister
for Home Affairs, as Roy Hattersley's deputy, I used to berate
the then government for having 50,000 people in prison; we have
now broken 80,000 and, as I understand it, still edging up. What
is the truth about what is going on because, on the one hand,
we have a wonderful tale from the Minister about how aspirational
it is, he has all these wonderful aspirations, all these documents,
he is full of aspiration but, on the other hand, our usual suspects
who tell us about what is really going on in prisons say that
you cannot increase and improve prison education when you have
got prisons that are totally full, where people are being directed
up and down the country for hundred of miles to just find a bed
for the night? The priority in our prisons today is just finding
a prisoner a bed. We were told 15 months ago that 30% of the prison
population had a chance of some prison education and training,
now it has slipped well below that. What is this gap between aspiration,
eloquently put by your fellow Minister, and the truth of what
is really going on in the prison estate?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: As
you know, the truth is the numbers have gone up and that has caused
a high degree of churn. What is quite extraordinary is in those
circumstances we have still been able to produce an improved outcome
for the majority of prisoners. One of the things that warms me
more than anything else is that we have been able to get a report
from the Inspectorate that puts two words, which are unusual in
this context, "dramatic" and "improvement",
together on the same page.
Q17 Chairman: But no percentage and
no numbers, Lady Scotland? There is no evidence in all the paperwork
I have looked at that the figure we were given 18 months ago of
30% has been modified. All the evidence suggests that figure has
now been hidden from public scrutiny.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
do not feel that is right because if you look at the figures which
are coming out now in terms of the attainment levels and the standards
being obtained by prisoners, they have continued to go up. We
have had a system which has been under acute pressure being managed
remarkably well to enable the learning and skills agenda still
to be delivered. Is it where we would ideally like to be? No,
it cannot be, because we had hoped that the benefit of the 2003
Act would by now have been starting to move. Although we had pressed
down heavily saying that those who are dangerous and serious need
to be contained, there was the other part of the 2003 agenda which
said that those who are not dangerous could be dealt with differently.
For example, you will remember one of the issues for us was the
way in which sentencing had upscaled, the tariff had upscaled,
so although seriousness may not have changed very much, the sentence
given by the courts has. There were a number of drivers which
caused us to believe that had happened as a result of sentences
not being enforced appropriately. If you look at the way in which
fines were dealt with, historically fines were used far more extensively
than they are now, but then when we looked at enforcement, we
had about a third of fines being enforced and that really had
to change. One would have thought that the change we have now
brought about, where there is over a 90% success rate of enforcement,
would have rehabilitated fines to enable courts to use them more
effectively; that is not happening. We then look at the community
penalties, and we wanted community penalties to be used as an
alternative to imprisonment, and we see the upscaling continuing.
Part of what we have to do now is to redress that balance. We
are doing a review to ask some fairly pertinent questions: why
is it that although we have rehabilitated through enforcement—because
you will know for community penalties that there was an issue
in terms of enforcement—that has gone up to about 87%. Once
we have got fine enforcement up, community penalties enforcement
up, why is it that the choice may not still be being made to use
those as a way of driving through? Some of the things which Phil
and I have been doing by working quite aggressively together in
the last 18 months are to try and make a better business case
and take a grip of those drivers. The reason that we are, frankly,
quite excited about what is happening now with the engagement
with employers in the learning and skills agenda is that we do
know, as your Committee knows, that if we can get people jobs
that will cut deeply into the re-offending figure.
Q18 Chairman: Lady Scotland, we saw
ample evidence of really good schemes, the Transco scheme, in
a number of settings, a number of big businesses working in a
very creative way, we would not deny that, but what we are worried
about, and you still have not answered us, is we found that even
in the best prisons we went to quite a small number of prisoners
were getting the chance of getting out of their cell and doing
something constructive to change their lives. You still have not
answered the question how many, because our informants from prison
governors and elsewhere, suggest the numbers have slipped so it
will not be as high as 30%, it will have fallen below 30%?
Phil Hope: Chairman, the latest
figures we have for this year, for the three months of August,
September and October, show that the percentage of the total prison
population engaged in learning in August was 31.6%, September
was 33.2%, and October was 35.5%, so although you are right to
suggest there has been pressure on the prison population for all
the reasons we have just been discussing, I think the new system
of delivery we have put in place through OLASS is managing to
achieve much higher participation rates than previously as well
as good success rates.
Q19 Chairman: The same interpretation
could be said if you were measuring quality of less and less numbers
that might be impressive, but if people are only getting out of
the cell for seven hours rather than 11 hours that covers up something
else, does it not, Minister?
Phil Hope: Yes, but I am describing
what I know to be the importance of engaging prisoners in skills
and learning inside the prison system, I have to say outside in
the community as well, but just to stick with inside custody for
the moment. Although there is huge pressure on the prison regime
and prison governors need to ensure that they are providing safe
and humane conditions in which people are being kept in custody,
nonetheless there is clearly evidence of increased participation
in learning by offenders. Indeed, partly what we are trying to
do with the consultation and the Next Steps document is
to say that experience in prison when you are undertaking work,
could that be more about work and training so that learning is
not only what goes on in the bit that you call when you go off
to do learning, but prison as a whole becomes a place of work
and skills development for people to get to understand the nature
of a working day, attendance, punctuality, all of those kinds
of things, as well as developing particular skills while they
are doing other things like laundry, cooking and cleaning inside
the prison. Some of those jobs could be made more like a real
world job, get skills and attach training to it and there could
be employment opportunities in those very areas when those offenders
leave prison.
|
